Is the Biblical Flood Account a Modified Copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
Skeptics claim that the flood narrative of Genesis1 is a rewritten version of an original myth, The Epic of Gilgamesh, produced by the Sumerians. The flood of the Epic of Gilgamesh is contained on Tablet XI2 of twelve large stone tablets that date to around 650 B.C. These tablets are obviously not originals, since fragments of the flood story have been found on tablets that date to 2,000 B.C. It is likely that the story itself originated much before that, since the Sumerian cuneiform writing has been estimated to go as far back as 3,300 B.C. The dating of Genesis is uncertain, since the preservation of papyri is not nearly as good as that of stone. Liberal scholars place the date between 1,500 and 500 B.C., although the events are claimed to have occurred several thousand years earlier.
